The frothForums are back, and the webmaster has provided a dedicated
Fantasy Warriors forum
for discussion of our fave wargame.
If you don't have Javascript on your machine then you can't
pick up on the latest forum topics here... but then why not just
pop to the FW
frothForum yourself and check it out?

News!

Mirliton
have a fully functioning Fantasy Warriors Miniatures webshop which now features pretty much all of those old Grenadier molds. Mirliton have outlets all over the world, including
here in the UK where they trade as Vexilia
for reasons steeped in miniatures historical myth... Vexilia now have the full MirlitonFantasy catalogue online and available for order.

According to our Italian counterparts at Naran Fantasy Wars there is currently a dispute between Doug Cowie's em-4 and Mirliton over the ownership of the rules, which has prompted them to remove the English version from their own website... we don't know too much about that at the moment, except that several years since announcing their own FW releases em4 still only have the barbarians and the plastic dwarves and orcs.

Again thanks to our Naran
collegas for providing us a pdf of the first 13 Warrior Newsletters, from which we shall be extracting the good bits and then maybe posting the boring bits later. First up are the Dark Elf Army Lists from the elusive Warrior #5, plus some new magic spells and dragon breath rules to spice up your games.

Greetings fellow frothers and welcome to our pages devote to
that classic fantasy wargame, Fantasy Warriors! We have some real
veterans of the game amongst our number, who have been playing
the 1st edition (written by Nick Lund and published by Grenadier
Miniatures UK) for some long years now.

Of course being true frothers we haven't been able to leave
well enough alone, and the game has evolved somewhat with various
amendments and 'strap-ons' over this period. At some
point the FU!UK will finish their project to collate
all of the various scraps of paper into a single document
(well you never know... -Doc). In the meantime any discussion
of the game is likely to generate more froth than a badly poured
pint of Guinness!

We here at FU-UK hope over time to bring you some of the
'enhancements' that we think will add to your enjoyment
of this game. Indeed we hope that this page will become the
biggest and best (English language) resource for the game! How we
doing so far? We do have some of our rules here already, as well
as a few of the (heavily amended) army lists we use in our
battles.

But first things first- why do we favour this esoteric system
over some better known and supported games out there?

Why Fantasy Warriors?

Like any game FW has its little quirks and oddities, but the
thing that makes it great to us is the focus on command and
control. In many wargame systems you'll find yourself poring
over your army's movements and tactics. You have a godlike
level of control over each of your little figures, only losing
your ability to determine their every move when an unusual
psychological effect afflicts them.

FW takes a different approach, placing you much more in the
position of an overall commander, issuing orders to your
commanders and struggling to match their reactions to the
battlefield situation. What is more you need a physical (or
metaphysical) means of conveying these orders- if you can't
get a messenger through to your men you might even have to send
your warchief after them yourself!

On top of this you have the problem of ill-disciplined troops
failing to respond to your orders, and even suffering from
ongoing psychological effects, like 'bloodlust' which
causes them to go charging into the nearest enemy, and probably
getting minced in the process...

This all gives you a real flavour of the 'fog of war', requiring
you to begin with a well thought out plan and the ability to make adjustments
to that plan should it all go pear-shaped in the second turn.

More about Nick Lund

Fantasy Warriors was originally written by a bloke called Nick Lund who appears
to have had many talents- not only was he clever enough to write a fast
and furious game like Fantasy Warriors but also produced his own figures
and owned his own games company - 'Chronicle Miniatures'. According
to The Stuff of Legends web site Chronicle
Miniatures (originally an independent company) was bought out and Nick Lund
went to work at the Citadel Design Studio, who continued to distribute the
original miniatures until they were eventually replaced with new designs.

When Nick Lund joined Grenadier Miniatures to form Grenadier Miniatures
UK, Chronicle ceased to exist. Chronicle miniatures was well known for a
time, producing fantasy and sci-fi miniatures in the late 1970s. All the
moulds and masters were then purchased by an Italian company called Stratelibri who re-released the Fantasy Warriors
line under the name Nemo Miniatures.

Cunningly sitting on the game for a number of years (perhaps
they were using babelfish to translate it into Italian?
-Doc), there was much excitement (in Frother Central) about
the release of a new second edition developed by the Stratelibri
team... available for free too!

Til, er, Nemo folded, or at least stopped producing FW products, though
you'll probably be able to get the rules from their site for a while (we'll
see about hosting them here if/when their site stops supporting it). Ah,
well, according to our Italian chums at
Nick Lund's Fan Team it wasn't much cop anyway. The old Grenadier masters
are now in the possession of Doug Cowie's
em-4 Miniatures, something of a return home range, as Cowie was part
of the original team that first brought us FW.

Lund also wrote the 'Future Warriors: Kill Zone' rules set, a futuristic
skirmish type game, and with Hugh Pitt released it through Grenadier Models.
It is now available to download for free here, thanks to their kind permission and the efforts of
Gisby's Gaming Page. Apparently a 2nd edition of this
is in the pipeline (and has been for several years, so it should be good
eh?).